A blog in which Drew Kaplan describes recent goings-on in his life, Jewish stuff, musings on life, etc.

01 November 2011

Watching "UN Me"

Yesterday afternoon, as part of a Beach Hillel program, I saw the movie "UN Me". Now, while I attended partly because of my job and association with Beach Hillel, I was interested to hear criticisms of the UN. It wasn't a topic I had ever particularly given any thought, let alone any attention. So, I watched.
The movie, itself, discusses what the UN is supposed to be and provides several in-depth examples of how it is sadly incompetent/ineffective, such as peacekeeping operations in Rwanda & Cote d'Ivoire, the IAEA & Iran, and the terrorism specialist not dealing with terrorism, amongst others. The movie would've been horribly depressing were it not for the amusing string of humor woven throughout the movie by the "star" of the documentary, Ami Horowitz.

One of the cool things about the showing was that Mr. Horowitz was on-hand to take the audiences questions, both on-stage and off. Some of the students, it should be noted, were certainly tremendously appreciative of such an intimate audience with Mr. Horowitz.
Coming away from the movie, I felt two things: 1) Thankful to be informed about the dysfunctionality of the UN and, more strongly, 2) Frustrated and sort of upset about the whole situation with the UN. Although Mr. Horowitz said an important course of action that people can do is to contact our congressional representatives and express our concern with them, I wished more could be done directly. A severe issue is peacekeeping, which the peacekeepers often fail at doing - I wish I could bring a team or multiple such teams to an area such as either Darfur or Southern Sudan to enforce the peace and protect the innocent people there, whether by myself or, if I had millions upon millions of dollars, to provide for such personnel. Ah well, I am sure more can be done by people, but, ultimately, the simplest method is what Mr. Horowitz suggested.

I look forward to when the finished version is released in the springtime and hope it receives a large viewership.